atxhomeguide.com

Friday, March 27, 2009

Portions of a DC-10 jet registered to the Miami, Florida-based Arrow Cargo company fell from the sky over a residential area in the city of Manaus, Brazil on Thursday.

Parts of one of the turbines of the aircraft caused some damage to a car and a few houses, but no injuries were reported. The airplane was traveling to its destination of Bogota, Colombia. According to the Brazilian Defense Ministry, the parts that detached are the rear exhaust diffuser and a section of the exhaust. The involved plane, registered N526MD, was built in 1978.

“I opened the window after I heard this huge boom and I see this thing up in flames, right in front of my doorway,” said Aparecida Silva, a local resident, to Globo TV. “I had no idea what it was, I thought it was some weird, ugly thing or a UFO or something.” ^{((Translated from Portuguese)) Portuguese language: Estava no melhor do sono, ouvi uma pancada, abri a janela e vi algo pegando fogo. Aí eu não sabia o que era e disse: é um bicho feio, um extraterrestre ou algo assim.}

Rai Marinho, a representative for the Arrow Cargo in Manaus, said that the jet, which was carrying an engineer and three crew members, had engine difficulties soon after taking off. It was able to keep flying, but was obliged to divert to Medellin due to inclement weather, where it landed without incident. The representative added that his company would pay residents for the damage.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

San Jose, California — A woman eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant bit into a chewy bit that turned out to be a human finger. She immediately spat it out, warned other patrons to stop eating, and upon recognizing the object as a finger, vomited.

“I’m more of a Carl’s Jr. person,” the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman, Anna Ayala, told Knight Ridder. She said this incident was her first visit to a Wendy’s restaurant. Ayala described how she found the finger, “Suddenly something crunchy was in my mouth,” she continued, “and I spit it out.”

According to Devina Cordero, 20, after Ayala found the finger, she ran up to her and Cordero’s boyfriend and said, “Don’t eat it! Look, there’s a human finger in our chili.”

“We went up to the counter and they told us it was a vegetable,” Cordero continued. “The people from Wendy’s were poking it with a spoon.”

The restaurant is located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

Wikinews reporter David Vasquez drove his car up to the drive-thru menu and found that chili was still on the menu, at a price of US$1.19 for a small serving. He also witnessed workers unloading supplies from a semi-trailer truck in the restaurant’s parking lot, and carting them into the back door of the establishment.

According to Ben Gale, director of environmental health for Santa Clara County, the finger did not come from any of the employees at the restaurant. “We asked everybody to show us they have 10 fingers and everything is OK there,” he said. The found portion of the finger likely belonged to a woman because of its long and manicured fingernail, also found in the food.

Officials seized the food supply at the restaurant and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, where they believe the finger may have gotten mixed in with the raw ingredients used to prepare the chili. The restaurant’s operators were later permitted to re-open after preparing new chili prepared from fresh ingredients.

As this story was filed, there was no mention of the incident on the Wendy’s corporate web site. Wendy’s issued a statement through a spokesman.

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us,” said Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond. He referred to the incident as an “unsubstantiated claim.”

“We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers,” Desmond said.

According to county health officials, the unfortunate woman who bit into the finger is doing fine, despite her initial reaction. Officials also noted that the finger would have been cooked at a high enough temperature to destroy any viruses.

The Santa Clara county medical examiner reported that the finger had a solid fingerprint, although investigators did not say if a search of fingerprint databases would be performed to find the owner of the finger.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer announced Thursday at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire that he will officially run for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Roemer, who had explored a bid for the past several months, wants to focus his campaign on the issues of campaign finance reform and fair trade.

Roemer, 67, served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1980s as a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected governor in 1987 and served once again as a Democratic Party member before switching to the Republican Party ahead of the 1991 gubernatorial election. He lost the party’s primary to David Duke, who is also considering a 2012 presidential run.

Roemer, who has $19,000 left from his exploratory committee, only accepts contributions from individuals below $100. He argued during his announcement that “I have deliberately chosen a path requiring the help of many because that’s the way to win and, more importantly, that’s the way to get these mighty things done after the election.” He says he is waging his campaign against “special interests”.

Political adviser Mark McKinnon who worked on Roemer’s first gubernatorial campaign, argues that he “has an important message about the corrupt influence of money in politics” but complains that the media has delegated him as an “improbable, long-shot, third-tier, comic book” candidate. Roemer has not been invited to any Republican primary debates and usually polls below one percent.

He has based his campaign in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, where he leases an apartment, and plans to utilize a one-on-one strategy to build grassroots support. He enters a growing field of candidates that includes fellow former governors Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Jon Huntsman, Jr. of Utah and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, as well as Representatives Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Ron Paul of Texas and Thad McCotter of Michigan. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and businessman Herman Cain are also running.

Roemer argues that “neither the president nor any of the other candidates for this office addresses or has solutions for the major problems facing America.” But Roemer believes he does. He tells viewers to stay tuned to his campaign and that it will be something “you don’t wanna miss”.